


ya filthy animals

by vowelinthug



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Petty Crooks, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 22:00:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17088524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vowelinthug/pseuds/vowelinthug
Summary: Flint and Silver could be rulers of an illegal organization, major mob bosses, kingpins, criminal masterminds, etc.But then they could also be petty shoplifters who like to drink during the day and fool around on their houseboat.





	ya filthy animals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Craftnarok](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Craftnarok/gifts).



> hi laura!! merry christmas!!
> 
> This is the same petty crook au as [this little fic I wrote on tumblr a long time ago](https://vowel-in-thug.tumblr.com/tagged/petty-crook-au), but it's not really necessary to read that first. it's just the two of them shoplifting at a grocery store and being really embarrassing
> 
> i've never really wrote a modern au before and it was both strange and fun getting to make modern references!

Flint steps out onto the back deck of the boat, squinting at the pink sky. The sun is barely rising over the row of million-dollar, art-deco-nouveau style houses that sit on the banks of the canal. Idly, he lifts his dirty undershirt to scratch his belly, taking a sip of weak, instant coffee from his favorite mug. It has a cartoon of an alligator in sunglasses bathing in a beach chair, with _MY GRANDMA VISITED MIAMI BEACH AND ALL I GOT WAS A LOUSY MUG_ written in teal and purple letters. Silver had found it in a Tampa Goodwill.

It’s his favorite mug, because they only have two mugs, and the other is just two ceramic breasts with a handle on the opposite side, and two large, ceramic nipples poking through a tiny red ceramic bikini. Flint has trouble even looking at it.

He’s up early, and he’s not sure why, since they went to bed pretty late. But he’d awoken to take a piss and then his mind had been alert with something he has yet to identify.

Their houseboat rocks with a gentle current, echoes of the sea a few miles down the water. He stares out across the canal. It’s still cool out, the day not yet baked by the Florida sun, and he’s not being eaten alive by mosquitos. It’d almost be nice, if he hadn’t been slightly hungover still. He drinks his shit coffee, watching the big, beautiful houses across the water. They’re silent and dark, except for the tall palm trees planted between each patio. They are oddly bright in the dawning morning, wrapped from top to bottom in glowing yellow string lights.

“Shit,” Flint says.

A rustle from behind, but Flint doesn’t turn to watch Silver come out and join him. He’s still frowning at the lights.

Silver sits down on the soft, grungy leather cushions lining the back deck of the boat. At one point, they’d been white.

Last summer, this boat had belonged to a luxury boating company in the Gulf that had been renting out their elegantly retro, restored-to-look-like-a-Wes-Anderson-movie-prop ships on Air BnB to rich honeymooners, dumb socialites, and highly sponsored internet influencers. Flint assumes they’re no longer in business, though, since he and Silver had helpfully pointed out the obvious flaw in their business model by pushing all the on-board staff overboard in the middle of the night and sailing away with the ship.

By the time anyone would have been alerted to the theft, they’d been well down the coast and rounding the tip of Florida, heading back to Miami-Dade. Technically, with the boat, they didn’t have to return to Aventura, but what can they say? They’re homebodies.

In the meantime, they’d disguised the boat well enough. Which is to say, it resembles less a luxury cruise boat and more like the decor one finds at the bottom of a dirty fish tank. They hadn’t picked one of the newer models, but instead one that had been state of the art in the late 1980s. The paint has all peeled away outside, the window frames chipped and battered, the hull covered in layers of grime. The hard-top canopy over the flying bridge is yellowed with the sun, and the decks hadn’t been swabbed since the last time it had been used for engagement photos. It’s been lived in.

Silver’s hair is all over the place. He’s wearing only a pair of red, shiny basketball shorts and his false leg. The fake foot is a shade lighter than his actual skin tone, and looks even lighter next to the dark, muted tattoos Silver has wrapped around his only calf muscle. The tattoos match the ones that cover Silver’s left arm, running up his shoulder and brushing the edge of his neck. They’re faded with age, and they can make Silver look really dangerous. To those who don’t know him, and even to some who do, the jagged symbols and black lines are reminiscent of street gangs and Russian prisons from the movies. Right now, though, in the pale light of the sunrise, they look as soft as the rest of him.

He’s drinking his own instant coffee, his tanned fingers wrapped around a pair of large, ceramic tits.

He’s also looking across the water at the trees. “Fuck,” he says. “Did I miss Hanukkah?”

“Probably,” says Flint. “What day is it?”

Silver squints up at him. “What day is Hanukkah or what day is it today?” he asks. “Either way, I have no idea.”

Flint thinks it might be Thursday, which isn’t helpful. Last he checked, December has a few Thursdays. It’s difficult to keep track of days when they don’t do that much with them. It’s especially hard to notice seasons changing, when there’s no such thing as seasons in south Florida.

“I haven’t bought you anything,” Silver admits, wincing at the taste of his coffee.

Flint shrugs, because obviously, he hasn’t either. “We could do like a _Gift of the Magi_ thing. You could sell your bong to buy me more bullets, and I could sell my gun to buy you some weed.”

Silver looks scandalized. “Sell my _bong?_ ”

It’s too early for terrible coffee. Flint tosses the rest of his overboard, but he isn’t standing close enough to the side, and he knows he’s probably splashed it all over the side of the ship, over the painted _Walrus_. They’d added that on there themselves when they were disguising it. He can’t remember what it used to be called; something terrible, like _Windsong_ or _The Escape_ or _The Ranger_.

He starts to head to the upper helm, preferring to steer from there rather than inside. They dock at night at the decks of empty houses to avoid paying a fee at a local slip or marina, but this area is white enough to call the cops on those who trespass on neighbors who don’t even exist.

“Hey,” says Silver, stopping Flint. “Remember the rule.”

Flint sighs, stepping back from the ladder. “It’s a completely arbitrary rule,” he grumbles, going back into the cabin. “I don’t need pants to sail a ship.”

“Nothing I intend to put my mouth on at any point should touch the exposed surfaces of this ship!” Silver calls out to him, for possibly the millionth time. “Especially that chair. You’ll thank me later.”

Flint will, but he’s not about to admit that anytime soon.

 

* * *

 

_December 20th_

 

It turns out to be December 20th, so they still have time to find gifts for each other.

They work together, though, so it’s difficult trying to maintain an element of surprise. Flint supposes that’s part of the fun.

The first house they break into, though, is not fun.

“Ugh,” says Silver, surveying the landscape of toys, games, and dolls that cover every surface of the large living room. “I don’t want any of this shit. Who lives like this?”

Flint doesn’t point out they’ve been sleeping on a mattress without a sheet, because Flint had been the one to ruin the old one in the first place, although that had been six months ago. He doesn’t point out that they have only one pillow now, because Silver had accidentally thrown their other one overboard while aiming it at Flint. He doesn’t point out that Silver ate cereal out of an empty plastic butter container that very morning.

Silver leans over to inspect the large screen television, stepping on several toys on his way to do so. “Ugh,” he says again. “How do they manage to get this so _sticky?_ ”

They leave before Silver can write an empty-threatening note telling the vacationing family to hire a damn maid _or else they’d be back_.

The next house is more fortuitous. It seems to belong to a couple who prided themselves on being childless. Every surface is white and spotless and boring.

Flint leaves Silver to roam downstairs while he searches upstairs. The spartan guest room is mostly useless, but the bed is the same size as the one on their boat, so he rips off the sheet and shoves it into his duffel bag.

The bedroom is equally boring. He takes some expensive, delicate necklaces, a digital camera, and two pairs of Gucci loafers that are both his and Silver’s size. He also finds a sizeable collection of sex toys in a woman’s top drawer that he stares at for no particular reason, agape, until Silver calls out for him.

He doesn’t sound panicked, though. Flint sticks his head out of the room, and as loud as he can, hisses, “What!” Even though there’s no one around, it seems stupid to yell.

A pause, then, just as loud as before, “How do you tell if silverware is real silver again?”

Flint closes his eyes. “A — a magnet! Magnets don’t work on silver.”

A longer pause, then quieter, “ _Bollocks._ What kind of fridge doesn’t have a single magnet?”

They have a tiny propane fridge on the houseboat. It’s entirely covered with magnets, with a good two-thirds of them doubling as bottle openers.

“Just take it!” Flint says, heading into the office. They’d been using plastic cutlery from take-out restaurants for weeks now, their last knife and fork somehow disappearing. Flint doesn’t know what happened to them, but Silver looks shifty every time he asks.

It’s too light outside to take anything large, but in the office he finds a mini-safe and a brand new Apple Macbook, sitting nice and clean on a glass desk.

Flint stops, considering it. They could sell it. But Silver’s old PC laptop is at least seven years old, and takes about ten minutes to load Solitaire, which is all it’s able to do now. They used to go to the library to pirate movies off the free wi-fi, but now it takes too long to do, and the library put up all these stupid firewalls anyway.

He shoves the laptop down the front of his trousers, the metal ice cold against his stomach. He has to put the charger in his duffel, which might give it away if Silver sees it, but he has no where else to put it. He takes the whole mini-safe too, so he can happily take a hammer to it this evening. It rattles slightly, and it’s probably just passports or birth certificates, but whatever. Nothing good has ever been put in a mini-safe, but he quite enjoys the act of smashing them open.

He finds Silver in the kitchen. There’s a rectangle under Silver’s hoodie, far larger and more obvious than the Macbook down Flint’s trousers, but he’s not going to mention it.

“Hey,” says Silver, looking like a shadow in all black against the gleaming white kitchen. “Should we leave all the water running? Like they do in —”

“Christ, _no_.” Flint grabs Silver’s bag off the floor and shoves it onto Silver’s shoulder. It’s heavy with stolen cutlery and appliances. Flint can see the top of an immersion blender sticking out. “Let’s get out of here.”

On the kitchen counter is a three-foot tall Christmas tree with nothing underneath. It’s fake, white plastic with red baubles and green, unlit lights. Silver picks it up as he slips out the broken patio door, shoving it under his arm.

Flint follows, with three pillows under his.

 

* * *

 

_December 21st_

 

Flint loses Silver almost as soon as they walk into Walmart.

He knows Silver does it on purpose. He thinks it’s funny that Flint gets overwhelmed in Walmart. They’re too _large_. He’s pretty certain the entire village he’d grown up in could fit in here, and he hates that village as much as he hates Walmart.

He had no real intention of getting Silver anything in here. They’d come in for groceries, and now he has several bags of vegetables, two boxes of rigatoni, some popcorn, and Frosted Flakes under his sweatshirt.

Somehow, instead of leaving, he finds himself in the DVD aisle. He reads several titles of films he’s never heard of, starring the same blonde actor and actress in every one, it seems. Everything seems to be about a superhero or a car chase, and to him, they all look like wonderful movies to fall asleep during. There are also box sets of television shows, but they’re even more foreign to him. He hasn’t had access to cable since the last time he’d been in prison.

He hunts down some older titles, and finds a special “Classic Christmas” shelf. He shifts in place as he takes them in, hoping he just looks indecisive about the selection, and not like a man trying to make room under his shirt.

He heads out to their car (a 1994 black Mustang that actually isn’t stolen, because it costs $200, because it’s a piece of shit. They usually leave it parked in the lot of a different Walmart, closer to the water, for whenever they go inland. They can leave it parked for weeks at a time, because no one would ever steal it, because it’s a piece of shit.) to put the groceries away. He notices something in the small back seat, something which hadn’t been there before. But it’s covered with a blanket, looking conspicuously inconspicuous, so he doesn’t touch it. He puts the food in the trunk, which always smells of mildew and gasoline, and sees a bunch of new toiletries and underwear back there, too.

He finally finds Silver back in the toiletry section.

“You better not be giving me condoms for Christmas,” Flint says as he approaches.

“Not even if they’re flavored?” Silver asks, not looking away from where he’s eyeing the many, many varieties.

“They don’t sell flav— Holy shit.” He stops, looking where Silver is pointing. “They really do sell everything here. No, I don’t want those either.”

Silver wraps an arm around Flint’s waist, and Flint puts his arm around his shoulders. There’s a new scent clinging to Silver’s hair, an earthy, green, round smell he doesn’t hate.

They stand at the row of condoms like that, looking as though they’re in an art museum. A pop rendition of “Holly Jolly Christmas” plays, muffled over the loudspeaker. They stand there, enjoying the air conditioning for a little while longer before they go.

 

* * *

 

_December 22nd_

 

Flint hovers at the bar, nursing his drink as he keeps an eye on Silver, who is making his rounds. He keeps his other eye on the security teams near the exits, but they don’t look suspicious of anything. The bright pink and purple lights of the Glimmer ballroom at the Fontainebleu Hotel are giving him a headache.

Silver is easy for him to spot, but not because he looks suspicious. He’s surrounded on all sides by rich, tanned bankers and CEOs, every one of them dyed and plucked and stuffed into silk for this fancy work holiday party. Even with all the money they all spent to look halfway decent tonight, none of them can match what Silver is accomplishing effortlessly.

No one there is young enough or cool enough to enjoy the kind of nightlife Miami is famous for, but for a few thousand dollars a head, the Fontainebleu is happy enough to recreate the experience. The DJ, who looks like Pitbull if Pitbull was much younger and gayer, looks disinterested in figuring out what kind of music this crowd will move to. He’s been busy chatting with a wealthy-looking seventy-something for the last ten minutes, his every move telegraphing his desperation for a sugar daddy. Flint would wish the DJ luck, if it weren’t for the fact that his distraction has led to a dance remix of “September” playing on repeat the whole time. He’s about ten seconds away from shooting out the sound system. That song is going to be stuck in his head _all night._

Of the two of them, Silver is the superior pickpocket. He’d gotten them the tickets to this party as easily as plucking apples from a tree. Now he’s out there, ensuring as many people as possible won’t have the cash on hand to tip their waiters and valets later on tonight.

Flint doesn’t like picking pockets. He’s never felt comfortable getting that close to strangers, especially if said strangers are still alive and uninjured after the encounter. He’d only been responsible for picking one pocket that evening, and he’d already done it an hour ago.

But then he’d seen Silver in the crowd, hair pulled back as he smiles at people and lets his hands wander. They’re in their only nice suits for the night, and Silver looks _some_ kind of way in his light gray suit, the black button-down ridiculously tight underneath. Flint had seen the pink lights dance off the sweat on his neck, the edge of his tattoo barely visible, and then he’d gone to pick another pocket.

It’s still early, not even 10pm, when Silver finds him again. “Ready? I think I’ve had enough.”

“Not quite,” says Flint, grabbing his wrist and tugging him out of the ballroom. The security guards don’t even glance their way. They’re silent as they head towards the elevator.

Silver’s eyebrow raises as he watches Flint insert a keycard and push the button for one of the penthouses, but honestly, who stays in a penthouse and leaves their keycard still in the envelope given at the lobby, with the room number clear as day?

“I thought you don’t like doing hotel rooms,” Silver asks as the elevator begins to climb.

Flint doesn’t. They’re not usually worth the risk, with cameras on every floor, and the odds of finding anything of worth too low.

“What do you know about what I like?” he asks, and presses Silver against the wall of the elevator. Silver, actually, knows quite a lot about it. He doesn’t let up until the doors slide open with a soft ding.

Silver, breathless, now fully aware of the plan, snatches the keycard out of Flint’s hand and drags him towards the penthouse. He doesn’t ask Flint how he knows the occupants won’t be back soon. Truthfully, Flint himself doesn’t even know, but the banker he’d stolen the key from had been flying high in a pile of cocaine on the bathroom floor, and probably wouldn’t remember that he’d even booked a room until well into tomorrow afternoon.

Besides, this is one of the easier crimes to sneak out of. If they get caught, they’re just a dumb, drunk couple who can’t keep their hands off each other and who found a lucky keycard. It wouldn’t even be that much of a lie, although they aren’t drunk, and it would be utilizing a very liberal definition of the word “found.”

Silver knocks gently on the door, pressing his ear against it, and then opens it slowly, poking his head inside. Then he grabs Flint by the front of his shirt and pulls him inside. He uses Flint’s body to shut the door behind them, kissing him hard against it.

“This room probably has beds, you know,” Flint mumbles against Silver’s lips. “Big ones, with many — pillows.”

“We have a bed at home,” Silver says, kissing down Flint’s neck. “What we _don’t_ have is a real, solid _door._ ”

Flint grabs Silver by the jacket, and he can tell the inner pockets they’ve stitched in are filled with several dollar bills and more. He nudges Silver back a little so he can speak. “I want to be naked,” he says, looking Silver in the eye. “And I want you to fuck me with your suit still on.”

Silver kisses him again, hard, until Flint slips away. He moves the top latch on the door over, so even if anyone has another keycard, they can’t just walk in, and starts heading towards the nearest bedroom.

“Wait,” says Silver. “Are you saying you don’t like the way I normally dress?”

Silver’s wardrobe consists entirely of basketball shorts, loose jogger pants, and awful button-down Hawaiian shirts he thinks are ironic. Yes, that is what Flint is saying.

But he doesn’t turn around or speak, just sheds his tan linen jacket onto an armchair. He untucks his white shirt and is working on unbuttoning it when Silver plasters himself against his back and starts doing it for him.

“I’m just supposed to fuck you,” Silver mutters into Flint’s neck, “while you’re wearing nothing but this stupid necklace.”

Silver gave him this shark tooth necklace for his birthday two years ago, not expecting him to actually wear it. Flint, in retaliation, never takes it off, and pretends not to notice it makes Silver’s dick hard whenever he sees it.

He slips out of his recently acquired oafers while Silver unbuckles his belt for him. “Yeah,” he says. “Consider it an early Christmas gift. Keep your shoes on.”

Silver groans, pushing him towards the big bed in the center of the room. Beyond it is floor-to-ceiling windows to a patio, and beyond that, the Atlantic, but it’s too dark to see anything but stars and the shimmer of a full moon reflected. The bed is still perfectly made, and Flint almost wishes there was some way to fuck in it without ruining it, so whoever sleeps here next wouldn’t even _know_ , but there’s no way to do that with the vigor in which he wants Silver to fuck him.

Flint turns around, and in Silver’s hand is Flint’s gun, which he recovered from the back of Flint’s trousers. He just wordlessly hands it back to Flint, and Flint steps out of his trousers and pants in one motion, leaving them bunched together on the floor for quick re-entry. He puts the gun on the night stand and slides backwards onto the bed, watching Silver watch him do it. The sheets are cold and smooth on the backs of his thighs.

Silver’s face is flushed, his hair loose from its knot, and his suit is a little rumpled, but otherwise he looks untouched and perfect.

“I have some stuff in my jacket,” Flint says, and spreads his legs. “Mind the ticket.”

Silver stands there stupidly for another moment before stirring into action. Flint tugs idly on his cock as Silver scrambles for the condom and free packet of lube he’d gotten from the free HIV testing center last week, for just such an occasion.

Then Silver is on him again, pulling Flint closer by the thighs so his front is pressed against Silver’s suit. Flint wraps his legs around Silver’s back, keeping him even closer with another kiss. Blindly, he works open Silver’s trousers and gets a hand inside, smiling at the way Silver keens into his mouth. Silver is already hot and hard in his hand, because no crime ever gets Silver’s blood running like pickpocketing.

Silver stops kissing him to rip open the packet of lube, and then Flint stops moving the second one of Silver’s fingers enter him. He won’t need much preparation, the two of them spending most of the afternoon fooling around in the houseboat in anticipation for the party. They hadn’t fucked, though, in anticipation for the afterparty.

Flint wraps his arm around Silver’s shoulders, back arching, panting wetly into Silver’s open mouth as he works himself back onto Silver’s finger. “Another,” he gasps, and Silver obliges, god, how he always obliges. He keeps his ankles locked behind Silver’s back, even though it traps his hand in Silver’s pants, even though it means Silver can’t move his fingers as much, even as the shape of Silver’s own gun digs into his heel. He can’t let Silver go.

“Come on,” Flint moans, and Silver adds a third finger. “Come _on_.”

“I _am_ , you bastard.” Silver’s face is bright red, and he’s probably sweltering in his suit, but Flint cannot care right now. Not when Silver’s fingers are scissoring him open perfectly, relentlessly. They’ve been doing this too long for Silver to not know all the right spots, but Silver also knows Flint enjoys the stretch as much as anything.”Can I—?”

“Yes,” Flint says, with something too pained to be relief. His arm loosens from around Silver and grabs the condom left on the bed. He holds it up while Silver uses his teeth to open it, and together they slide it onto Silver’s cock.

Then Silver roughly pushes him back on the bed and keeps him there with a hand on his chest, just under his shark tooth necklace. His other hand is still working him open. “Don’t move.”

Flint literally couldn’t move anywhere else if he was on _fire_. But Silver means it in every way, and so he shakes with the effort not to fuck himself back on Silver’s fingers. Silver reaches over and grabs a turquoise throw pillow from the top of the bed. He shoves it under Flint’s ass, raising him up a little. He stops to look at Flint, at the place where his fingers still sit, where Flint can’t help but clench down. Silver should look ridiculous, still all dressed except for his red cock sticking out of his nice pleated trousers, except he just looks ridiculously sexy, and Flint wants to _die._

And then he might actually, because Silver is pulling his fingers out swiftly and spreading him wider with one hand, using the other to guide himself in.

“ _Fuck_ ,” they both groan as Silver bottoms out. Flint arches his back and he cries out at the small buttons of Silver’s shirt pressing against the underside of his cock.

“Come _on_ ,” he says, one more time, and then Silver. Comes the fuck on.

He grabs Flint’s hips and goes to town, as they say, thrusting wildly but with dangerous precision. Flint’s neck bends back against his own volition, so he can see out the window, and he’s not sure if the stars he’s seeing are real ones or Silver’s doing. Silver bends down, bites on the long line of Flint’s neck, right beside the shark tooth, and Flint can feel him smile just like a shark would. He rubs his beard against Flint’s flushed skin, his whole clothed body pressed against Flint’s bare one now. He can’t help but rut against him, fucking back on Silver’s cock like a madman. He tries to slip his hand in between them, desperate to come.

But then, Silver whispers in his ear, “Don’t you dare come now. You’ll stain my nice shirt.”

Flint groans, twisting his head away, because damn it, Silver is _right_. If he hasn’t already leaked pre-cum on it, it’d be a miracle of dry cleaning. With considerable effort, and truly a testament to his character, he wrenches his hands away from himself and clutches at the sheet underneath instead.

Silver leans up again, looming over him as he fucks just as hard as before, unyielding. As though the few inches distance between them now would do anything to curb Flint’s impending orgasm. Behind held in place while Silver fucks him for his own pleasure is as stimulating as a hand on his cock would be. He clenches down on Silver, feeling all 400 threads of Egyptian cotton on his bare back as he writhes for him. Silver’s coat jingles with the weight of stolen goods, but the bed beneath them is expensive, so it doesn’t make a sound. Even when Silver gives one final hard thrust and comes with a long groan.

He doesn’t even give himself time to enjoy it, though. He breathes hard, once, it hitting Flint on his overheated, heaving chest like a hot wind on a brushfire, and it spreads to every inch of him.  Then he’s pulling out as soon as he can, but, knowing Flint, replaces his cock with his fingers again. Flint’s asshole is throbbing, aching, and it’s exactly what he needs, especially when Silver gets on his knees as swiftly as he’s able and wraps his lips around Flint’s cock.

Flint bows forward with a howl, his shoulders lifting off the bed as Silver keeps fucking him with his fingers. Silver sucks on the head, tongue swirling, and then softly and sweetly swallows him all the way down. He sucks without breath until Flint comes down his throat with a ragged cry.

They still, relaxing, but listening to see if anyone knocks about the noise. No one does. Flint’s hands are tangled in Silver’s hair, his legs hooked over Silver’s shoulders. The ceiling is much higher than at the houseboat, the walls too far from them. It’s exposing and vulnerable, which is nice, every once in awhile.

Flint can barely lift his head to look down at Silver. His mind is blissfully blank. He doesn’t know how he got so lucky to find a man capable of fucking the words to “September” out of his head, but he finds himself eternally grateful for it.

Hoarsely, he asks, “How’s your shirt?”

Silver kisses the inside of his thigh and says, just as hoarse, “Spotless.”

Then he helps Flint up. Because they have the time and they might as well, they take a shower in the penthouse’s comically large bathroom. Although Silver has to be careful to keep his hair dry, to avoid suspicion.

They dress, and after a cursory look around the hotel room, finding very little of worth, they slip out again, leaving behind nothing but a lube-stained pillow, a wet shower, a used condom, and a severely messy bed.

Flint doesn’t ask to see how much money Silver got tonight, and Silver doesn’t offer to show it. They’ll look later, at home. It’ll be enough to get by, though. It always is.

When they get in the elevator, they bypass the party on the fourth floor and head straight for the lobby. They’d taken the bus here earlier, but when Flint gets to the valet kiosk, he reaches into his pocket and hands the man a ticket.

They’ve done this too often to look surprised when the valet returns five minutes later. It’s something of a Russian roulette. Sometimes, they get an airport rental Honda. Other times, they get this.

“Sweet ride, man,” says the valet, handing Flint the keys to a bright blue Bugatti.

“Thanks,” says Flint, walking around. “It’s new.”

Silver tips the man fifty dollars and says, “Happy holidays.”

They’re not stealing the car, of course. They’re not that stupid. It’s just nice, every once in awhile, to drive up the intercoastal late at night, nothing but trees on one side, the ocean on the other, and the sky clear and black above, with the windows of a beautiful car down, with the hand of a beautiful man resting on your thigh.

They make their way onto the road, Silver immediately fiddling with the radio. At the first red light, he stops.

“ _Remember how we knew love was here to stay,”_ says the man on the radio, “ _now December found the love that we shared in Sept—_ ”

“I will crash this car into a canal,” Flint says, and then they sit in dead silence for about a mile until Silver finds the AUX cord to plug in his phone, and then it’s all chestnuts roasting on an open fire straight to the sea.

 

* * *

 

_December 23rd_

 

It’s a nice day. The sky is clear, the temperature is a balmy 74 degrees, the currents steady and soft, and the group of teenagers are only gently weeping.

Flint stands on the glistening stained deck of their million-dollar luxury yacht and smiles. No one can see it behind the bandana covering the lower half of his face, but it’s the thought that counts.

“Hurry up, now,” he says kindly, waving his gun at the only teen not zip tied to the railing. She cries a little harder, her long, platinum hair sticking to the snot on her face. She takes the Ray-Ban sunglasses off her boyfriend’s head and slips them into the duffel, then reaches for her friend’s Prada ones.

“Wait,” Flint says quietly. “Hand me those.” He takes them from her trembling hand and sticks them in his pocket.

Silver’s down below at the helm of the boat. Not _their_ boat, of course. They wouldn’t take their home on a job. It’s a fancy, fast speedboat rental they’d taken from the same marina the yacht had come. His face is barely visible, shadowed by a baseball cap, with a mask covering his mouth, too. But Flint knows he’s watching them all intently, one hand on the throttle, the other hand with a gun trained at the heads of the kids.

Flint had already taken the untied girl downstairs, where she’d cried like a fucking banshee until he’d convinced her that he wasn’t going to touch her, and then made her help him raid their top-shelf liquor cabinet, as well as all their money, electronics, and a bit of their weed. Now she’s emptying her friends’ pockets, and he bets they won’t appreciate it later when they realize he’s _only_ taking their cash and not their wallets. No one wants to spend Christmas at the DMV.

“I’m doing you kids a favor,” Flint tells them. “I’m the ghost of Christmas Present, here to tell you to stop being such pricks.”

They’d been tailing these kids for a couple days now, although they aren’t really kids anymore. They’re well on their way to becoming their rotten, vain, selfish parents. They’d rolled into Miami Beach three days ago, with their Ivy League bumper stickers on their Corvettes, loudly drinking at the beach, scoring drugs way harder than weed, maxing out Daddy’s credit cards, and being rude to every single waiter they come across. He and Silver pull a job like this every school break, and at least twice in the summer. These idiots see another ship coming to join them out in the middle of the sea, and as long as the ship is blasting the latest Drake song, they think they’re in a music video and will happily let another party boat get close.

Flint and Silver get paid, and the stuck-up kids get the shit scared out of them and then have great essay material for graduate school. Everybody wins.

“You guys should be out working an actual job, or studying,” Flint says, “instead of day-drinking, fucking each other, and smoking pot.”

Even at this distance, Flint can see Silver snort and shake his head. One of the two boys whimpers, “But the semester is over.”

Flint sticks his gun under the boy’s nose and cocks it. “It’s what now.”

The boy cries harder. The untied girl sobs, “Oh my _god,_ David, _shut up._ ”

Flint kneels down until he’s eye-level with the boy, who cringes away. “Think of the stories you’ll be telling to your dickhead fraternity brothers once this is all over,” Flint says softly. “I won’t be there to say otherwise, will I? You can tell them you stood up to me. You can say you were _so_ brave, how you took my gun, beat the shit out of me, and tossed me overboard, saving your little girlfriends. You can say you _didn’t_ piss yourself and ruin your nice new boat shoes. You can tell them whatever the fuck you want.” He leans in a little closer, and winks. “You and I will know the truth, though.”

“That — that’s, like, everything,” the untied girl says. The duffel bag rattles in her hand.

Flint looks into the bag. There are four cell phones, two Rolexes, an Apple watch, four designer sunglasses, two Coach bags, a Fitbit, several bottles of Patron, a bottle of single-malt scotch none of these kids would touch anyway, an engagement ring that had not been given to either girl by either boy present, despite the levels of debauchery Flint had interrupted, another Macbook, a gold tennis bracelet, a couple ounces of weed, and a pair of diamond stud earrings.

These are all things these kids could replace by the end of the day. He and Silver are providing them something priceless. They’re getting an _experience._

“Nice work,” he tells her, which for some reason makes her cry harder.

He clips the duffel bag to the rope he’d tied to connect his ship with theirs, and watches it slowly slide onto the deck beside Silver. He turns back to the girl, pulling another zip tie out of his pocket. He gestures for her to sit, but before she can, Silver yells out, “Hey, Captain!”

It’s a code name, but not one Flint would have chosen.

He looks over the railing. Once again, Silver doesn’t actually sound panicked. “What?”

“Is that a Balenciaga sweatshirt?” he asks, pointing at the untied girl.

It clearly is. It’s got BALENCIAGA emblazoned across the front of it with a giant logo in black on white.

The girl wraps her arms around her midriff. “ _Nooooooooooo._ ”

Flint sighs, gesturing impatiently with the gun. He has to do it a few more times before she finally rips it off, revealing a skimpy bathing suit. She throws the sweatshirt at him with more fury than he’d been expecting.

He throws it over his shoulder and forces the girl to sit, using his teeth and his free hand to tie her to the railing. Then he unties the speed boat and vaults over the railing.

It’s barely a drop, the yacht only a few feet higher than the speed boat, but still, he stumbles a little, feeling a sharp twinge in both of his knees. “ _Fuck._ ”

“That was cute,” Silver says. He’s smiling. Flint can’t see it, because of his mask, but he knows. He’s holstered his pistol, but now he’s holding a flare gun. He fires it into the air, making the kids scream.

It’s the only warning Flint is given before Silver is pushing down on the throttle, and they speed off into the sunset. He clings to an empty chair until he gets his bearings, then retrieves the bag of goods where it had slid under the helm. He checks to make sure the liquor hasn’t broken in their descent, but it’s a nice day, so they haven’t.

“This counts as one of your Christmas gifts,” he says, tossing Silver the sweatshirt.

Silver lets go of the throttle and the wheel completely to look at it, and Flint has to jump forward to grab it so they don’t slow down. “Yay!”

“That girl made me feel like a dirty old man.”

“You’re the best dirty old man _ever_ ,” Silver says to the sweatshirt.

“What’s a Balenciaga anyway?”

Silver looks very unimpressed. “It’s only in, like, every rap song right now. You’re so uncool.”

Flint grumbles, trying to steer them to their hideout, so they can dump the speedboat and get home, but it isn’t easy, crouched over Silver like this. But then Silver pulls down Flint’s bandana and kisses him on the cheek. He smells of salt and suntan lotion, his mustache prickly on Flint’s most recent, fading sunburn, the brim of his stupid cap bumping into Flint’s cheekbone, and everything seems easier after that.

 

* * *

 

_December 24th_

 

Flint drops Silver off at the thrift store to go meet their fence in the parking lot of a Papa John’s Pizza. It’s only across the street, but he has to do a U-turn and deal with _two_ traffic lights, and it’s also raining. Everyone in Florida drives like an idiot in the rain. It takes him almost ten minutes to get there.

The parking lot of the Papa John’s is empty, save for one very nice car. No one inside the pizzeria seems concerned about what’s happening outside, though. They’re all too busy sullenly eating their own pizza and questioning their life choices.

Flint turns off his car and watches as the windshield wipers continue to move, despite the engine being off. He doesn’t know why he’d bothered to turn them on in the first place, since the blades are so worn down they don’t actually clear the windshield of any water. In his rear view mirror is a woman, waiting for him under an nice umbrella. She’s also texting.

The rain is already lifting up a little, but he puts on the hood of his sweatshirt and gets out to join her. His flip-flops squeak on the wet pavement.

Max is the fanciest thing this Papa John’s parking lot has ever seen. Her heels are impractical, her blouse easily creased yet totally smooth, her hair untouched by frizz. She looks like a mannequin at Macy’s, but like, with actual style. Flint frowns at her, standing by his trunk, perfectly dry somehow and acting as if her presence here was completely fine. She’s not his fence. She’s not even his fence’s fence. There were at least five middle men separating what she does and what Flint and Silver do.

“Whatever it is,” he says to her, “we don’t want it.”

Max smiles without teeth, not looking up from her phone. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be saying to you?”

Flint huffs, unlocking the trunk. The gasoline smell is diluted by the rain, but the mildew is stronger than anything now. “Can I interest you in a like-new Coach bag? Recently acquired.”

Max takes in the assortment of kitchen appliances, odd pieces of jewelry, and designer clothing with a raised eyebrow. “We usually only buy wholesale goods. Still in its packaging.”

“This isn’t Amazon,” he says. “Think of it more like Etsy. We provide a human touch. Also I wasn’t exactly prepared to be passing this shit off to _you._ ”

She says nothing. Her lipstick probably costs more than the items in his car. It definitely costs more than the car. In her hand, her phone begins to ring, but she ignores it.

“We were Christmas shopping,” he explains. “Where’s your holiday spirit?”

“Elsewhere,” is all she says, which is fair. Everything smells like mold, ozone, exhaust, and pizza. She reaches delicately into the trunk, like she’s afraid to touch anything, and picks up the diamond earrings. She examines them in her palm for a moment before sliding them into her pocket.

“We have a job for you,” she says.

“Thanks,” says Flint. “I’d rather run out into traffic.”

“You won’t have to be in charge of anything,” Max says mildly. “We just need a few extra hands. _Capable_ hands. Even middle management needs to have a basic level of competency you two sometimes possess. _Sometimes_.” She looks directly at Flint’s flip-flops when she says that.

“Look, do you want any of this stuff or not? That’s a decent toaster, I looked it up.”

“Was your ego so bruised after the Urca incident that you would allow it to stand in the way of a fortune?”

“Incident? You and Eleanor tried to have me killed.”

“It was five years ago,” Max says, rolling her eyes. “And I think it worked out pretty well in your favor, yes?”

It had. Silver had been the one they’d hired to kill him.

“I promised Eleanor I would let you know you had options,” Max continues. “We could use _both_ of your expertise, and you look like you could use a new car. Or proper shoes. Or nicer jewelry. Or jeans that aren’t in tatters.”

Flint forces himself not to touch his necklace, or look down at his jeans. At one point, he thinks, they might have just been regular jeans. But then a couple small holes in each knee have, over time, turned into several large holes, especially in the right leg, where a good portion of his thigh is visible. The ass and the crotch have the same durability as newspaper. But Silver literally — _literally_ — can’t keep his hands off Flint when he wears them. “Who’s stupid enough to wear full jeans in this fucking humidity?”

Speaking of. The rain had stopped, and, like always in Florida, the sun is immediately out. The rainwater on the pavement starts to steam, the sudden warmth choking Flint. Max shakes her head, stepping back towards her nice, sleek but inconspicuous Lexus. “Happy holidays, Flint. Give my regards to your boy.”

Flint won’t. “The earrings?”

She stops and smiles again. Making a show of shaking the rain off her umbrella, she closes it, hooks the end onto her arm, and hands him an envelope from her purse. Her phone starts to ring again.“My card is inside,” she says to Flint, already answering her phone as heads back to her car. “Think about it.”

Flint absolutely won’t. He waits until she’s gone before slamming the trunk door and getting in the car. Inside the envelope is her business card, which he tosses out the window, and $1,000 in fifties, which he keeps.

A thousand dollars is nothing to people like Max. It’s nothing to people like Flint either. They might come back for it, expecting something, but Flint’s not concerned.

It takes him another ten minutes to cross back over to the thrift store. In the wet morning, this whole stretch of Biscayne Boulevard is a concrete gray eyesore — the palm fronds brown and wilting from the rain, the grassy medians overrun and ugly. Every store looks abandoned, with the last remnants of civilization the flickering red or green or orange OPEN signs that entice not a soul. The only thing alive is the traffic, which is miserable and endless. Everyone is going somewhere, except here. It’s bleak, and humid, and it does not feel like Christmas at all.

Except for across the street. Painted bright magenta with lime green detailings, Out of the Closet thrift store is festive year round. The small shop is run by an AIDs organization and they’re the place to go for free HIV testing or if you’re looking for designer knock-offs, tastefully tacky used furniture, or red leather stiletto thigh-high boots in a size 14 mens.

There are cars in this parking lot.

Flint grabs the bag full of unsold goods from the trunk and heads inside. It’s equally colorful, overwhelming in a different way from the Walmart. Every corner is crowded with interesting and sometimes confusing things. 

“Are you looking for that Hawaiian pizza?” says the guy behind the counter. He’s wearing a leather harness over a bright green Christmas sweater.

Flint blinks at him. “Uh. What?”

“That absolute snack with a terrible amount of pineapples all over his shirt?”

“Oh,” says Flint. Then he grimaces. “Yes. I am.”

The guy smiles, blatantly checking him out. “He said to tell you he’s already shopped on _that_ side of the store.” He points to the half filled with kitchenware, shoes, and books. “So you shouldn’t browse over on _that_ side yet.” He points to all the clothes.

It’s very difficult to surprise each other, but they like to try. “Thanks.” He hikes the bag up higher on his shoulder. “You taking donations?”

He beckens Flint closer with an extravagantly manicured hand, looking highly skeptical, more likely remembering Silver’s shirt, or perhaps looking at Flint’s shark tooth necklace. “The sign out front says we take everything, honey, but I reserve the right to say it’s a misprint.”

The coy smile drops from his face when he sees what’s inside Flint’s duffel bag. He holds up one of the purses like he’s found the Holy Grail.

“Thanks,” says Flint awkwardly, not wanting to interrupt. “I’ll just grab my bag on the way…?”

The guy shushes him, and Flint heads over to the books.

He doesn’t look for long, though, because Silver will read anything you put in front of him, regardless of how good it is, and that’s hardly fun. He eyes the DVDs for a minute, even though they’re all probably scratched, but then he sees a double-feature copy of _Die Hard_ and _The Fifth Element_ and he grabs it. Silver is a big fan of Bruce Willis, because “he fulfills my niche fetish of butch men with shaved heads in tank tops shooting people.”

He picks up a couple books for himself and then he’s rifling through the used records, wondering if Silver would find it funny if he got him some 1960s klezmer music, when he sees it out the corner of his eye.

Hanging on the edge of the nearest clothing rack, almost as if he was meant to see it, is a bright red button down shirt, with large white hibiscus flowers. It’d be too large for Flint, nevermind Silver, who has a slightly smaller frame. But as soon as he sees it, he can’t unsee it. With a sigh, he abandons the records section.

When he heads back to the counter, the guy is still looking at him like he’s the second coming of Christ, just in time for Christmas. The look vanishes the moment Flint places his items down.

The guy physically recoils from the shirt. “Oh, babe,” he says. “Why are you _encouraging_ this?”

Flint says nothing, but privately he’s pleased that he even slightly projects the air of a person with some control over anything.

The guy has just finished putting his purchases into a hot pink plastic bag when Silver slides up to him. His hand goes right to Flint’s ass, finding, as always, the small hole in his back pocket. He prods Flint’s ass cheek happily with his fingertip instead of saying hello. He’s also holding a hot pink bag.

“Do you think I’d look good in heels?” he asks.

“Obviously,” Flint says without thinking, because _obviously_. “You just want to be taller than me.”

“Obviously.” He rubs his chin on Flint’s shoulder, plucking at the platinum wig sitting on a mannequin head near the register. “Would I look good as a blonde?”

“No.”

“If I cut my hair off,” Silver says threateningly, “I could wear whatever wigs I want. And then you would have nothing to do with those fancy brushes you secretly bought me.“

Before Flint can respond, with a steady amount of cursing, the guy behind the counter says, “Ex _cuse_ me,” and points to a sign above the door. It reads, ABSOLUTELY NO _GIFT OF THE MAGI_ IN THIS STORE.

Silver pouts. Flint says, suddenly very tired, “Can I please have my bag back now.”

The guy hands Flint his receipt, and his duffel bag, but he looks like he’d be content to watch them for hours. He’s already wearing the tennis bracelet.

“How much did we get for everything?” Silver asks as they walk away. He’s now using his hold on Flint’s jeans to fish for the car keys.

“Two hundred,” Flint says, opening the shop door for Silver. He stuffed the other $800 in a donation box while the guy had been whispering to the purses.

“Nice,” says Silver, squinting at the sudden sunlight through the clouds. “Do you want to get pizza tonight? I feel like pizza.”

They have to restock food for the boat tonight, as well as get more fuel and refill their fresh water tanks. After that, though, they should have enough for pizza.

 

* * *

 

_December 25th_

 

Flint wakes up to the peculiar sensation of the world moving underneath him. He drags himself to consciousness slowly, carefully, feeling first the warmth of the sheet wrapped around him, then its softness, then the sun streaming through the windows, and then, finally, the regular aches of his aging body. He grips his pillow closer and cracks an eye.

Silver is sitting at the inner helm, bathed in the early white light of morning. The inner helm, not being nearly as disgusting as the outer helm, is exempt from the no-pants rule. He’s sitting in the chair in just a black stump sock and his Balenciaga sweatshirt. A cigarette dangles from his lips, his hand steady on the throttle.

The houseboat had initially been meant for a nuclear family, with thin walls separating a few small rooms to give the illusion of privacy. But Flint and Silver hadn’t really cared about all that. They’d gutted the inside, doubling the size of the galley and their bedroom, replaced the linoleum floors and paneling with pale wood and tiles, and Silver stuck a few plants in the corners where the paint job isn’t the best. The front face of the boat is lined with windows, which they like to keep open for a cross breeze, the pale yellow curtains dancing in the wind even when they’ve weighed anchor. Silver goes around each morning to open them one by one, and usually when he’s fallen asleep, Flint has to go and close most of them. They also built a small loft space for Flint to read, where he can stretch out in the sun like a well-fed cat. Silver prefers to lounge in the cushioned booth opposite the kitchen where they eat. It gives him a view of the whole boat, of their bed, of Flint in the loft.

The air is cool out at sea, the ceiling fans idly drifting. Flint lies there for another moment, listening to the waves beat against the sides of the ship. It’s the only sound, other than the fuzzy jingles coming out of the radio near Silver.

When he finally gets up, he drags the sheet with him, wearing it like a toga. He comes up from behind and runs one hand down Silver’s chest, the other going up to scratch his back. “How long have we been out?”

Silver leans back against him. “About a half hour,” he says. “I don’t know how you can sleep through the horn.” He loves the horn. It’s probably the only water safety rule he remembers to follow.

“Merry Christmas,” Silver adds, “by the way.”

“I’m proud of you,” Flint says into his hair. “You haven’t made one ‘Silver Bells’ reference yet.”

“It’s only about 10:30. We’ve got the whole day still.”

Flint puts on yesterday’s jeans and goes to put the kettle on to make coffee. They recently acquired a french press, and it makes every morning a triumph.

It’s just ready to pour when Silver weighs anchor. Out the windows is nothing but blue seas, the sky an odd shade of overcast where it’s almost white. It won’t rain today, but the sun certainly doesn’t feel like shining yet. He remembers old cruel, cold, biting Christmas mornings, the company just a cruel, equally cold — but he only remembers them for a second.

He’s rummaging through the cupboards when Silver joins him. They’ve recently acquired a few additional pieces of kitchenware (all, apparently, metal) and it’s disorienting to Flint. “Have you seen that — fucking —”

“Oh!” Silver had been running his hand up Flint’s bare back, tugging on the back of the necklace, but now he’s stopped. He’s wearing basketball shorts again, because the no-pants rule absolutely extends to the kitchen table. “No, hold on.” He shuffles back to their room and grabs the fake white Christmas tree, which he plants on the kitchen table, and a hot pink plastic bag, which he hands to Flint with another, “Happy Christmas.”

It’s a plain white mug, with a realistic drawing of a blue shark. Above it, in nice cursive script, is the word MANEATER.

Flint stares at it. He hadn’t known it to be possible to adore an object this much this fast.

“Now we have _three_ mugs,” he says instead. “What are we going to do with _three_ mugs?”

“No,” says Silver, scratching his beard. “It’s still only two. I accidentally dropped the tits one the other morning.”

Flint is so overcome that he has to hustle Silver back over to the bed and kiss him for a little while. The coffee goes very cold.

He brews a second pot an hour or so later while Silver cooks them eggs. It’s one of three things he actually knows how to cook, but he can do it well.

They just finish eating when Silver gets up, slams the radio, which is valiantly trying to play “White Christmas” still, down on the table next to the Christmas tree, and declares, “Presents.”

He’s already given Flint one gift — the mug — so Flint digs the Macbook out from under the bed. Silver is overjoyed.

Hugging it to his chest, he says, “Can you do the thing while I wipe this out?”

Flint puts their dishes in the sink and heads up to his loft with another cup of coffee. Silver lowers the music until it’s basically just white noise, and puts on his glasses to start breaking into the locked computer.

The thing is this: Flint up in the loft, with one of his recently acquired pillows, and an open window down by his feet. He lays back, making sure the coffee isn’t in danger of spilling beside him, and grabs a worn book from the bottom of a nearby stack. He finds the place.

“Marley was dead, to begin with,” he reads, loud enough for Silver to hear him. “There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

Flint gets all the way to when the Ghost of Christmas Present arrives before Silver is finally into the laptop. He breaks out a bottle of recently-acquired tequila to celebrate, listens to Flint read a little more, and then gives Flint a plant.

He looks down from his book, blinking at the large fern. “Where the hell were you _hiding_ that?”

Silver shrugs, looking pleased. “It was getting it out of the Home and Gardening section at Walmart that was the trick.”

It doesn’t even look slightly wilted since then. Flint puts it up in his loft near the railing, so the leaves can tumble down over the edge and grow, where it probably won’t fall over. In return, Flint reluctantly gives him the Hawaiian shirt.

“I _knew_ you liked these,” Silver says incorrectly, with delight. He’s already removing his sweatshirt.

Then he stops. “Actually, let’s go for a swim first.”

Flint marks his place in the book and climbs down. He dumps the rest of a water bottle in the fern first and says to it, “Don’t fucking spill on my pillow.” But the water isn’t choppy today, and the plant looks content to chill.

When he gets out on the deck, Silver is already naked, gently rolling his stump sock off and resting it on one of the leather cushions.

“Not for too long,” Flint says, unbuttoning his jeans. “It’ll be cold, and I want to get dinner going soon.”

Silver rolls his eyes. “Yes, _mum._ ”

Flint slides in really close, kisses him, grabs his crutch, and attempts to wrestle him overboard.

“Hey! Unfair!” Silver cries, holding Flint around the middle and biting his stomach. “This is a hate crime! Also please be careful with your jeans, they’ve very delicate.”

Flint lets go and moves to the other side of the deck for safety while removing his jeans. As soon as they’ve been removed, however, Silver is at his side, trying to push him into the water. They’ll very likely snap their necks if they keep this up, so Flint saves them the effort by twisting out of Silver’s impressing backwards hold and jumps in.

It’s _freezing_ , even though the sun finally came out. The water is a deep, crystalized blue so dark it’s almost black. Looking down, he can’t see anything below his navel. He treads there, watching Silver enter the water much slower, like a nervous kid who isn’t sure if he remembers how to swim.

As soon as he’s in, though, he’s all grace and movement, diving deep until Flint can’t see him and then yanking hard on his ankle so he goes under. Flint chases him for a little while around the boat, and it takes him that long to finally catch him. As soon as he does, Silver twists in his arms and he’s pressed against every inch of him, and it hardly feels cold at all. Flint can barely see with the salt stinging his eyes, but he doesn’t need to see, not right now, so long as he can feel.

“Did you check the reports this morning to see if any sharks were spotted off the coast today?” Flint asks.

“Sure,” says Silver. “Here’s one right now.” He pushes down on Flint’s head until he goes under again.

Flint makes them get out not long after that, because Silver actually didn’t check to see if there were any warnings today, and the last thing he feels like dealing with is a shark attack, or worse — jellyfish. He’d been badly stung a few years ago and he’s still traumatized from it, mostly because Silver becomes completely _useless_ whenever Flint is ill or hurt, and just kept asking in a panic if he had to piss on Flint.

Silver waits on deck, slouching on his crutch and dripping, while Flint gets him a towel. He also gets him the pair of Prada sunglasses. They’re quite large, the white plastic frames thick, with curly, tortoiseshell arms. Silver puts them on immediately. Flint has long stopped trying to understand Silver’s fashion sense.

He goes to shower while Silver tans for a bit, because unlike Flint, he doesn’t just freckle and burn. When he comes out, there’s a framed Mark Rothko print leaning against the bed.

“You like it, right?” Silver asks, towel around his waist, as he lights another cigarette. “I thought it was funny, because it was the only bit of color in that ugly house.”

Flint likes it a lot. It was orange, with a yellow rectangle on top and a larger red square underneath. He knows the original is much larger, so the viewer can absorb themselves in the colors. But out here at sea, surrounded on all sides by blue and green and black and blue, the small print makes him feel warmer, brighter just looking at it.

He hangs it up over their kitchen table while Silver showers, and then cleans up from breakfast.

Silver is gone for a little while, so Flint starts making dinner. The sun is starting to set, but it’s not that late. Swimming always exhausts him, and he’s looking forward to crawling back into bed with Silver. He doesn’t need a holiday as an excuse for that, though. He looks forward to it every night.

He lets the recently acquired rigatoni boil and goes to get the DVDs he’d hidden from Silver up in the loft. The fern waves to him as the boat gently rocks.

On the deck, Silver has swabbed away some of the grime from everything, and is busy setting towels over all the leather cushions when Flint finds him. Stretched out on the floor is a blanket with their recently acquired alcohol, a bag of pre-popped popcorn, and two chocolate oranges — one Silver acquired and one Flint did. His new laptop is sitting opposite the cushions on a foot stool, the screen patiently black. 

“How did you know I got you movies?” Flint asks, handing them to him.

“You wouldn’t give me a computer with nothing to _do_ on it out here,” Silver says, smirking at Bruce Willis. He’s wearing his stupid new red Hawaiian shirt, it blousing around his slim waist where it’s tucked into a pair of tight jeans, the left leg pinned up for when he’s not wearing his foot. His new sunglasses are on his head, pushing his hair back. “You’re not that mean — _oh._ ” He’s found the last DVD in the pile, and the smirk turns into a proper smile.

“Come on,” Flint says, pulling his hair. “Help me set the floor.”

They eat pasta with garlic and broccoli on the floor of the deck, resting against the leather cushions, and then they lean against each other as the movie plays, as the sky turns yellow, turns orange, turns red behind the screen, as Silver sings every song quietly under his breath.

“ _Oh, Scroogey loves his money ‘cause he thinks it gives him power_.” Silver’s voice soft, murmured into Flint’s old favorite mug, his other hand resting on Flint’s inner thigh. “ _If he became a flavor you can bet he would be sour.”_

Flint gets up halfway to get the bottle of pre-made eggnog that’s more rum than nog, and Silver doesn’t turn away from the movie when he goes. But when he gets back, the movie is paused, and Silver is watching him, fiddling with something in his lap. The sun is almost gone by now, and all Flint has to see him by is the glow of the computer screen and the one light he left on inside.

“I got you something else,” he says, slightly nervous. “I — I spent so long at that stupid party trying to find you something different, so I wouldn’t have to resort to giving you this, but it was all ugly watches and monogrammed billfolds and cigars.”

“You did take those things, though.”

“Well, yeah,” says Silver. “That’s just stuff, though. It’s not for _you_. So. Here.” He thrusts an orange and white envelope into Flint’s lap and turns back to the movie, which is still paused.

The envelope is from Walmart, it says so on the label. He angles himself towards the galley, using the one light to pull out the photograph inside.

The other night, they had been testing out the digital camera they had recently acquired, because they had wanted to test it to see if it worked, and also because they had been a little drunk.

Mostly they’d taken pictures of the boat, their feet, the sunset. One memorable dick pic. But then they’d decided to test the self-timer. Silver had positioned it on one side of their kitchen booth, with he and Flint crammed together on the other side.

The picture is a little blurry, the light too yellow and dim. Flint is gesturing at the camera, frowning, midway through saying, “I don’t think it’s working.” They’d been drinking out of their mugs, so the ceramic tits are forever memorialized now on the table between them. Silver is not even looking at the camera. He’s looking at Flint, laughing at him, the affection evident even in the bleeding ink. Silver was supposed to have deleted all the photos.

“We were in Walmart,” Silver explains, while Flint keeps silently studying it. “They have this little photo printer thing near the back. I deleted it right after from the camera. I just. I didn’t want to lose it. I don’t know. Everything else on this boat is meaningless. Even the boat itself is. It can all be replaced, right? I wanted to do something different, I guess. I mean. _We_ can’t be replaced. Does that make sense?”

Flint can’t look away from the photo, but he reaches blindly for Silver’s wrist, needing to feel the skin of his inner arm. In the photo, Silver has a soft grip on Flint’s upper arm, and it’s a casual, thoughtless gesture — one of a hundred touches they give each other every day. But seeing it in front of him like this, seeing with his own eyes the way Silver knows how to touch him, seeing with his own eyes the way Flint lets himself be touched. Flint can feel that same weight of Silver’s hand on his arm now, and probably will forever.

“I know we’re not supposed to leave any traces,” Silver continues. “No names, no prints, no people. I don’t _want_ any of that shit, you know that. But, I just. I couldn’t delete it. It’s stupid. Let’s rip it up.”

Flint pulls it away from him. “I’ll break your hand.”

Silver’s smile is slower than the sunset. There’s something about sunsets that feel meaningful to Flint. They always seem so important, so rare and memorable, even though they happen every day. Silver’s hand is outstretched to take the photo back, but instead he uses it to turn Flint’s face towards him and kiss him.

“You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself without my hands,” Silver says accurately into his mouth. He leans back. “So you like it? I also got it put on a magnet. See?”

He hands Flint a small, heavy rectangle. It’s the same photo, the colors even blurrier in this format, with SEASONS GREETINGS in red and green mistletoe letters that at least cover the tits mug.

“Thanks,” says Flint. “I hate it.”

They never leave a trace anywhere they go, just whispers and outlines and an energy of paranoia, where you’re not sure if you’re being threatened, where you think you might be being watched. They like to move in the cracks people can’t see, and in the spaces people don’t ever go. It’s not lonely.

They have nothing to do with Christmas, but they’re the Ghosts of so many strangers’ Present, moving in and out silently and only leaving consequences. Even though Flint doesn’t know all the details, he knows Silver is followed by his own Ghosts of the Past, the same way Flint is, but unlike Scrooge, they never feel compelled to talk to them. Let them watch, for all they care. Let them see.

Silver taps the spacebar on the computer and the movie resumes, as does his humming. They lean back against the cushion, the photo limp in Flint’s hand, his head limp on Silver’s shoulder. He’ll be dozing in a minute, which he does through every movie. Silver always lets him, even his favorite ones.

Flint looks down at the photo again. Perhaps Silver is Flint’s Ghost of Things Yet to Come, as he is for Silver. It would make sense. Running his thumb over Silver’s smile, over his hand on Flint’s arm, Flint sees all the things they’ve yet to do together. He sees all the things they’re going to do, rippling out from them like waves that keep rushing up a long and quiet shore.

 

* * *

 


End file.
